https://www.channelfutures.com/wp-content/themes/channelfutures_child/assets/images/logo/footer-new-logo.png
  • Home
  • Technologies
    • Back
    • SDN/SD-WAN
    • Cloud
    • RMM/PSA
    • Security
    • Telephony/UC/Collaboration
    • Cable
    • Mobility & Wireless
    • Fiber/Ethernet
    • Data Centers
    • Backup & Disaster Recovery
    • IoT
    • Desktop
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • Analytics
  • Strategy
    • Back
    • Mergers and Acquisitions
    • Channel Research
    • Business Models
    • Distribution
    • Technology Solutions Brokerages
    • Sales & Marketing
    • Best Practices
    • Vertical Markets
    • Regulation & Compliance
  • MSP 501
    • Back
    • Complete 2023 MSP 501 Rankings
    • 2023 MSP 501 50-1
    • 2023 MSP 501 100-51
    • 2023 MSP 501 150-101
    • 2023 MSP 501 200-151
    • 2023 MSP 501 250-201
    • 2023 MSP 501 300-251
    • 2023 MSP 501 350-301
    • 2023 MSP 501 400-351
    • 2023 MSP 501 450-401
    • 2023 MSP 501 501-451
    • NextGen 101 Rankings
  • Intelligence
    • Back
    • Galleries
    • Podcasts
    • From the Industry
    • Reports/Digital Issues
    • Webinars
    • White Papers
  • Channel Futures TV
  • EMEA
  • Channel Chatter
    • Back
    • People on the Move
    • New/Changing Channel Programs
    • New Products & Services
    • Industry Honors
  • Resources
    • Back
    • Channel Futures 20: Top Tech Providers
    • Advisory Boards
    • Industry Organizations
    • Our Sponsors
    • Advertise
    • 2023 Editorial Calendar
  • Awards
    • Back
    • 2023 MSP 501
    • 2023 NextGen 101
    • Channel Influencers
    • Circle of Excellence
    • DE&I 101
    • Technology Advisor 101 (TA 101)
    • Channel Leaders Lists
  • Events
    • Back
    • 2024 CP Expo Call for Speakers
    • Channel Futures Leadership Summit
    • MSP Summit
    • CP Conference & Expo
    • Channel Partners Europe
    • Channel Partners Event Coverage
    • Webinars
    • Industry Events
  • About Us
  • DE&I
Channel Futures
  • NEWSLETTER
  • Home
  • Technologies
    • Back
    • SDN/SD-WAN
    • Cloud
    • RMM/PSA
    • Security
    • Telephony/UC/Collaboration
    • Cable
    • Mobility & Wireless
    • Fiber/Ethernet
    • Data Centers
    • Backup & Disaster Recovery
    • IoT
    • Desktop
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • Analytics
  • Strategy
    • Back
    • Mergers and Acquisitions
    • Channel Research
    • Business Models
    • Distribution
    • Technology Solutions Brokerages
    • Sales & Marketing
    • Best Practices
    • Vertical Markets
    • Regulation & Compliance
  • MSP 501
    • Back
    • Complete 2023 MSP 501 Rankings
    • 2023 MSP 501 50-1
    • 2023 MSP 501 100-51
    • 2023 MSP 501 150-101
    • 2023 MSP 501 200-151
    • 2023 MSP 501 250-201
    • 2023 MSP 501 300-251
    • 2023 MSP 501 350-301
    • 2023 MSP 501 400-351
    • 2023 MSP 501 450-401
    • 2023 MSP 501 501-451
    • NextGen 101 Rankings
  • Intelligence
    • Back
    • Galleries
    • Podcasts
    • From the Industry
    • Reports/Digital Issues
    • Webinars
    • White Papers
  • Channel Futures TV
  • EMEA
  • Channel Chatter
    • Back
    • People on the Move
    • New/Changing Channel Programs
    • New Products & Services
    • Industry Honors
  • Resources
    • Back
    • Channel Futures 20: Top Tech Providers
    • Advisory Boards
    • Industry Organizations
    • Our Sponsors
    • Advertise
    • 2023 Editorial Calendar
  • Awards
    • Back
    • 2023 MSP 501
    • 2023 NextGen 101
    • Channel Influencers
    • Circle of Excellence
    • DE&I 101
    • Technology Advisor 101 (TA 101)
    • Channel Leaders Lists
  • Events
    • Back
    • 2024 CP Expo Call for Speakers
    • Channel Futures Leadership Summit
    • MSP Summit
    • CP Conference & Expo
    • Channel Partners Europe
    • Channel Partners Event Coverage
    • Webinars
    • Industry Events
  • About Us
  • DE&I
    • Newsletter
  • REGISTER
  • MSPs
  • VARs / SIs
  • Agents
  • Cloud Service Providers
  • Channel Partners Events
 Channel Futures

Telephony/UC/Collaboration


A Bill with a View

  • Written by Charlene
  • December 31, 1997

Posted: 01/1998

A Bill with a View

d.b.Express-A-Bill Makes Record Analysis Easy
on the Eyes

By Charlene O’Hanlon

Bohemia, N.Y.-based Computer Concepts Corp.
has come up with a novel idea for telecom analysis and reporting:
make it easy.

d.b.Express-A-Bill, a reporting and billing analysis software
program designed for the telecom industry, can help make short
work of large amounts of call data. Carriers, billing companies,
resellers–anybody that generates a long distance bill–can take
advantage of the program’s easy-to-use (and efficient) method of
generating useful calling information for their clients and
themselves alike.

The program presents information such as calling patterns,
costs and durations of calls and destinations of calls in
user-friendly graphics, called Filescapes (a technology so cool
the company was awarded a patent for it), that allow users to see
trends and anomalies.

"Basically, d.b.Express-A-Bill allows users access to
specific data that they want to see," says Orland
Chamberlain of Computer Concepts. "When a user has millions
and millions of bytes in records–huge amounts of data–this
program allows him to ‘drill’ down quickly to the data he wants
to look at."

d.b.Express-A-Bill was developed from the company’s core
product, d.b.Express, visual data mining software that relies on
point-and-click commands. No standard query languages with this
program; d.b.Express uses a patented process to index information
that allows the user to point and click his way to specific
information.

"The graphics are all dynamically linked so when you
select certain calls you want to look at, other graphs react to
your selection," Chamberlain says. "Say you have a
graph on your screen that represents interstate, intrastate,
intraLATA and international calls. If you wanted to get a quick
look at your international traffic, you could click on the
international information bar on the graph and all the other
graphs would respond to your selection immediately by showing
cost distributions, duration distributions, terminating
countries, amount of calls to those countries, etc.

"The graphs are really what make the analysis, they show
all kinds of trends and anomalies, patterns that you’re looking
for," he adds. "It’s neat stuff; there’s nothing else
out there like it."

So neat, in fact, that the program now is being used by such
large companies as British Telecom’s Syncordia Services, billing
provider Profitec Inc. and Oklahoma City-based billing software
company Digital Communications of America (DCA), which is using
d.b.Express-A-Bill as an end-user billing analysis tool. In
addition, DCA has entered into an agreement to license the
program to resell. Marketing the program under the name VBOS, DCA
has tailored the product to serve the needs of its customers.

"The program is very flexible–mentally you don’t look at
mining the data the same as you would with a traditional tool.
With this program, you mine through the data and then decide what
you want," says Scott Pearson, vice president for marketing
for DCA. "It’s an exciting product."

Wallingford, Conn.-based Profitec, which is using
d.b.Express-A-Bill as part of its electronic billing service, is
equally impressed by the program. "What I really like about
the product is the huge data volumes that can be derived within a
single graphical view," says Randy Minervino, vice president
of marketing for Profitec. "In addition, the program is not
difficult to use. Instead of doing a text-based inquiry and then
depicting the results, you actually use the pictures as your
inquiry tool into the data. Because of that, it is very readily
used by a non computer-literate person."

Profitec has created an interface between its own billing
application and d.b.Express-A-Bill. The result is a joint product
called Express-A-Bill, which acts as a companion product to
Profitec’s Access-A-Bill, a text-based diskette billing system.

d.b.Express-A-Bill also is great for billing via the Internet
using the d.b.Express Internet Server application, which enables
the end user to access his bill and drill down into the call
detail via the Internet that, if printed, might cost the life of
one or two trees. "Say the user (an Internet service
provider, for example) has a large bill consisting of thousands
and thousands of call records. Using our software, the user
doesn’t have to download its call records into its computer to
look at them. The web server application allows end users to come
into the server and slice-and-dice their call records the way
they’d like to without the need of downloading their records. All
those graphs and reports are all available to the end user
without the need for the end user to have the data space to
support a large volume of records," Chamberlain says.

This feature also allows users to refresh their billing
information more frequently–rather than getting bill information
monthly, users now can receive information as often as daily or
weekly. There is no incremental cost of handling media. In
addition, it is a real cost-saver for billing companies looking
to cut back on their paper and postage costs while still
providing comprehensive billing information to their clients.
Rather than print out all the call records, the company can print
out invoices with a web address that its customers can visit to
view their specific calling records. Instead of a 10-page bill,
customers receive a one-page bill. It’s pretty easy to do the
math.

Sure, there are limitations to the software.
d.b.Express-A-Bill does not capture call data in real-time.
However, it doesn’t purport to. d.b.Express-A-Bill will tell you
how many minutes were spent on calls to Bangladesh during the
month, not how many calls telemarketer Steve has made in the past
hour. For detailed information based on specific data,
d.b.Express-A-Bill takes analysis and reporting to new levels.

For more information on the product, call Computer Concepts at
(516) 244-1500.

Editor’s Note: This is the first
installment of TechKnowledge, a monthly column that spotlights
the latest in telecommunications products and services.

Tags: Agents Telephony/UC/Collaboration

Most Recent


  • Watching reality TV
    The Channel on Reality TV: Tech Advisor Shares Experience on Startup Show
    Going on a show for entrepreneurs showed how the technology advisor channel is one of the business world's "biggest secrets."
  • Stolen Avaya licenses lead to guilty pleas
    How a Fake Channel Partner 'Reaped Millions' in Stolen Avaya Licenses
    An Avaya employee generated licenses without authorization from the company and sold them on the cheap to a fake reseller.
  • LLMs among new products
    New Products, Services for the Channel: Contact Center LLMs, Dell, Telarus, More
    The contact center providers are working to keep up with each other and differentiate with domain-specific large language models.
  • John DeLozier new job at ConvergeOne
    John DeLozier on New Job at ConvergeOne, Post-Exit from ScanSource-Intelisys
    Find out what DeLozier said when we asked him about his exit from ScanSource/Intelisys.

Leave a comment Cancel reply

-or-

Log in with your Channel Futures account

Alternatively, post a comment by completing the form below:

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Content

  • Cloud Phone
    AT&T to Offer Up to 1 Million Customers Cisco Webex Calling
  • Sign a Contract
    Unisys Adds Managed UCaaS with $153 Million Unify Square Acquisition
  • Fortune 500 2021 logo
    AT&T, Microsoft, Verizon, More Tech, Telco Companies Make Latest Fortune 500
  • Telephone poles and lines
    Granite Buys Epik: Score One for Legacy Telecom

Upcoming Events

View all

Channel Futures Leadership Summit

October 30, 2023 - November 2, 2023

Channel Partners Conference & Expo

March 11, 2024 - March 14, 2024

Channel Futures Leadership Summit 2024

September 17, 2024 - September 19, 2024

Galleries

View all

Broadcom-VMware Hits Snag in China as IT Incurs Too-High Cloud Costs

September 22, 2023

Cisco’s Splunk Acquisition ‘True Bombshell Move,’ Will Have Massive Impact on Cybersecurity

September 21, 2023

Cisco SMB Business Gets Updated Sales Coverage Model, New Investments

September 21, 2023

Industry Perspectives

View all

Why Conversational AI Matters for Your Customers and How It Can Boost Your Revenue

September 15, 2023

The 5 Ds that Lead to Unplanned Business Sales

September 13, 2023

Hot Generative AI Market Must ‘Cool Down’

August 28, 2023

Webinars

View all

MSP 501: Leadership in Cybersecurity

October 19, 2023

DE&I: Find the Balance that Works for You

September 7, 2023

Above and Beyond with the NextGen 101ers

August 30, 2023

White Papers

View all

6 UCaaS Reseller Challenges and How Real World Businesses Solved Them

February 1, 2023

Frost Radar: North American UCaaS Market, 2022

February 1, 2023

The Complete Guide to White-Label UCaaS for Reseller Success

February 1, 2023

Channel Futures TV

View all

Coffee with Craig and James Episode 129: ZLH Enterprises

Coffee with Craig and James Episode 128: Channel Partner Strategies Intelligence Service

August 25, 2023

Coffee with Craig and James Episode 127: Expereo, Movie Night Returns

August 18, 2023

Coffee with Craig and James Episode 126: ARG

July 28, 2023

MSP 501

The industry's largest and most comprehensive partner awards program.

Newsletters and Updates

Sign up for The Channel Report, Channel Futures Update, MSP 501 Newsletter and more.

Live Channel Events

Get the latest information on the next industry-leading Channel Partners event.

Galleries

Educational slide shows and images from live events.

Media Kit And Advertising

Want to reach our audience? Access our media kit.

DISCOVER MORE FROM INFORMA TECH

  • Channel Partners Events
  • Telecoms.com
  • MSP 501
  • Black Hat
  • IoT World Today
  • Omdia

WORKING WITH US

  • Contact
  • About Us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter

FOLLOW Channel Futures ON SOCIAL

  • Privacy
  • CCPA: “Do Not Sell My Data”
  • Cookie Policy
  • Terms
Copyright © 2023 Informa PLC. Informa PLC is registered in England and Wales with company number 8860726 whose registered and Head office is 5 Howick Place, London, SW1P 1WG.
This website uses cookies, including third party ones, to allow for analysis of how people use our website in order to improve your experience and our services. By continuing to use our website, you agree to the use of such cookies. Click here for more information on our Cookie Policy and Privacy Policy.
X